CORNWALL STANDARD-FREEHOLDER/PostmediaNetworkJohn Earle died after scuba diving in the St. Lawrence River.

CORNWALL, Ont. — Cornwall police say 43-year-old John Earle, a former provincial Liberal candidate, has died after scuba diving in the St. Lawrence River.

Emergency crews responded to calls for assistance at Guindon Park in Cornwall early Saturday evening.

Police say Earle had been scuba diving in the river and was brought to shore unconscious by firefighters and bystanders.

Earle was transported to Cornwall Community Hospital by paramedics and was later pronounced dead by hospital staff.

Police say the cause of death is not known yet known but no foul play is suspected.

An autopsy has been scheduled to determine the cause of death and the coroner’s office is investigating.

Earle was the Liberal candidate in last year’s election in the provincial riding of Stormont-Dundas-South Glengarry, which is currently held by the Conservatives.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/ex-provincial-liberal-candidate-john-earle-dead-after-scuba-diving-in-st-lawrence-river/feed0stdCORN-John_Earle1CORNWALL STANDARD-FREEHOLDER/PostmediaNetworkIt’s summertime at Queen’s Park, but that doesn’t mean living will be easy for the governing Liberalshttp://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadian-politics/its-summertime-at-queens-park-but-that-doesnt-mean-living-will-be-easy-for-the-governing-liberals
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadian-politics/its-summertime-at-queens-park-but-that-doesnt-mean-living-will-be-easy-for-the-governing-liberals#commentsFri, 05 Jun 2015 15:01:48 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=789708

“Everyone in the legislature will continue to work over the summer,” the premier said Thursday as the 107 members adjourned until Sept. 14. MPPs will work with constituents in their ridings, tour the barbecue circuit and learn about local concerns. “That’s what MPPs do when they’re not sitting in the legislature.”

They can look back on a particularly busy session in which the government passed 11 bills into law — more than any one sitting of the previous minority parliament. But there are plenty of challenges still looming.

Hydro One selloff

Handout/Hydro OneThe government has approved its sale of Hydro One, but that doesn't mean the work is over.

The Liberals “gave themselves” permission to sell 60 per cent of Hydro One in their budget bill, which passed this week, NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said. Her party and public service unions have launched a massive anti-privatization campaign the Ontario Tories have since joined. Expect more protest to roil over the summer. But the sale is happening. That means various ministries, including energy and finance, will have a busy summer preparing for an initial offering of shares, which could be valued at $2 billion. If the partial sale garners that much money for Ontario’s new Trillium Trust for transit, it will set a Canadian record for an initial public offering.

Elections Ontario found two Liberal operatives — Wynne deputy Pat Sorbara and Sudbury fundraiser Gerry Lougheed — were in “apparent contravention” of election law earlier this year. Those allegations arose from conversations both had with Andrew Olivier, who ran for the Liberals in the 2014 election but was supplanted by federal New Democrat turned provincial Liberal Glenn Thibeault in the recent by-election. That scandal has dropped off the media radar, but the Elections Ontario investigation was forwarded to the Attorney General’s office and the OPP continue a separate investigation.

Teachers’ pet peeves

Peter J. Thompson / National PostPeel Region teachers walk the picket line at Mississauga's Lorne Park High School on May 5.

The Liberal government is still at the table with many of its teacher unions, and others have walked away from meetings as short as 20 minutes. Some unions have warned members to prepare for a September strike. That means Minister of Education Liz Sandals and her staff will have a busy summer trying to reach a deal with riled-up educators to prevent a fall strike.

The Pan Am Games

Darren Calabrese/National PostDid Pachi expense that hat?

The international sporting event is based in Toronto and spread across the province, and though all three levels of government are contributing, it’s the province that will wear any failures. Security costs have already skyrocketed from earlier estimates and construction delays have plagued legacy projects tied to the events. Any major security issues, cost overruns or massive traffic snarls will fall to Queen’s Park to handle and answer for when opposition MPPs return in the fall.

Cap-and-trade

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jacques BoissinotCarbon-pricing policies are already deployed in the United States, the European Union, China, Japan and South Korea.

Wynne inked a deal this year to join Quebec and California in a new cap-and-trade system of carbon pricing. The hope is to unveil specific details and costs this fall, which means those same energy and finance ministries handling Hydro One have more work on their desks this summer.

All about sex ed

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darren CalabreseProtesters outside Queen's Park want the province's new sex ed curriculum repealed. New PC leader Patrick Brown has echoed some of their concerns.

Opponents of Ontario’s new sex ed and health curriculum are flustered over its LGBT inclusion, anatomical details in grade school and frank discussions on the tricks of all forms of sex, including anal and oral activities. Expect protests to ramp up over the summer as the curriculum nears its September implementation as some parents look to school boards to block the changes.

Capping third-party ads

Aaron Lynett / National PostThe 2011 Ontario election marked the first time three third parties spent more than $1 million each. The government is now considering enacting third-party spending regulations.

Ontario will add 15 new MPPs in the 2018 election to bring it back in line with federal ridings after they were reshaped, but that election could also bring new electoral rules. Wynne promised to crack down on third-party spending on election ads, which rose to $8.7 million in the 2014 campaign, but said details of those reforms and any discussions of a hard cap would wait until fall. The planned reforms will also include a spring fixed-date election to avoid doubling up the provincial and municipal votes in October 2018.

To appoint or re-appoint?

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Aaron Vincent ElkaimOntario Ombudsman Andre Marin is seeking a third term in his post.

Ontario’s controversial but effective ombudsman Andre Marin is at the end of his term, and an all-party committee of the legislature is looking through 60 applicants. His recent Twitter campaign to keep his job, raised a few eyebrows at Queen’s Park and for the first time it seems his job is in jeopardy. And, though all three parties must agree on his fate, the Liberals will be sure to wear the mud slung from his loyal following should Marin be passed over.

As the opposition renewed its calls Friday for resignations over the Sudbury byelection bribery allegations, Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne is standing by her team and deputy chief of staff.

“I will not force someone to resign over allegations I do not believe to be true,” Wynne said at a press conference following opposition calls for Pat Sorbara, her deputy chief of staff, to resign and the premier to step aside if charges are laid. She said she has a “terrific team” working for her and called Sorbara a “seasoned professional and woman of integrity.”

Ontario Chief Electoral Officer Greg Essensa has referred his investigation into alleged bribery in the lead-up to the Sudbury byelection to the Attorney General, and in turn, police. It’s now up to those officials to decide whether to lay charges related to Ontario’s Elections Act, which contains sections about offering bribes or inducements to encourage someone to run — or not run, as was the case with Andrew Olivier.

Olivier was the Grits’ candidate in the June 2014 general election but lost the Sudbury seat by about 1,000 votes. Former New Democrat MP Glenn Thibeault was Wynne’s preferred candidate when he agreed to ditch his federal party and seat to run provincially. Wynne, Sorbara and Sudbury Liberal Gerry Lougheed all asked Olivier to step aside gracefully and support Thibeault. Olivier, a quadriplegic, recorded his calls with Sorbara and Lougheed for note-taking purposes but later posted them online. In the calls, Sorbara offers him positions on boards or other appointments, but the party maintains she was acting on behalf of the Ontario Liberal Party, not the premier’s office.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nhSDau0tuw&w=640&h=390]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cm8bp9ZKUQU&w=640&h=390]

Ontario’s opposition parties, however, are far from satisfied with that defence and have called for Sorbara to resign from the premier’s office and Lougheed to be booted from his provincial appointment as chair of Greater Sudbury Police Services Board.

“It is beneath the dignity of the Premier’s office to continue turning a blind eye to the very serious allegations of wrongdoing,” said Progressive Conservative House Leader Steve Clark said Friday. “How can anyone trust the premier if she won’t ask Pat Sorbara and Gary Lougheed Jr. to step aside until the air is cleared?”

Clark also called on Wynne to resign if Sorbara is charged.

NDP leader Andrea Horwath sent Wynne a letter Friday in which she describes the scandal as “a clear breach of trust between your government and the people of Ontario.”

She chides Wynne for taking office in February 2013 on a promise to clean up the air of scandal left behind by previous premier Dalton McGuinty and run a more transparent and accountable government.

“Sadly, two years later senior Liberals have been caught offering bribes, under your direction. You have refused to take any responsibility, and you are denying that any mistake was made. Rather than restore faith in your government, you are undermining Ontarians’ confidence and trust in the democratic process,” Horwath wrote.

She threw out slanderous accusations casting a dark shadow over the entire Ontario Legislature

Wynne called the opposition accusations “hypocritical.” She said both parties have had controversial nominations in the past or had members resign seats so party leaders without one could run. She also said, during the Liberal minority govenrment from 2011 to 2014, opposition members approached the Liberals offering to give up seats in exchange for jobs.

Wynne wouldn’t name names and opposition members were swift to deny that.

Clark called it a channel changer.

NDP house leader Gilles Bisson slammed the premier for making the claim, saying, “Today, in a desperate and cynical attempt to distract from the criminal investigations into her staff and Liberal insiders, she threw out slanderous accusations casting a dark shadow over the entire Ontario Legislature. This is beneath any Premier or head of government.”

Two Ontario Liberal operatives were in “apparent contravention” of the Elections Act when they made alleged job offers to a former candidate in advance of the Sudbury byelection, according to Ontario’s chief electoral officer.

“Having reviewed the evidence and findings from this regulatory investigation, it is my opinion that the actions of Gerry Lougheed Jr. and Patricia Sorbara constitute an apparent contravention of… the Election Act,” Elections Ontario Chief Electoral Officer Greg Essensa writes in a report tabled Thursday in the legislature. He calls the move “unprecedented” as no one in his post has ever before referred a possible violation of election law to the Attorney General to consider further charges.

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If charged and convicted, Sorbara, Premier Kathleen Wynne’s deputy chief of staff, and Lougheed, Sudbury Liberal operative and appointee, could faces fines up to $25,000 and two years less a day in prison, according to a criminal lawyer.

As it stands, no formal charges have been laid and the matter is not before the courts.

The allegations stem from conversations Sorbara and Lougheed had with Andrew Olivier, who ran for the Grits in the general election in 2014, before the byelection was called. They wanted to him to step aside quietly for the Liberals preferred candidate, former New Democrat MP Glenn Thibeault, who eventually won the Feb. 5 vote. Olivier posted recordings of those conversations online and both Sorbara and Lougheed offer him various appointments in exchange for supporting Thibeault. Olivier didn’t bend and ran instead as an independent, finishing third.

Thibeault and Wynne are in no way implicated, and the former’s election win stands regardless of the outcome in Sorbara and Lougheed’s case, Elections Ontario spokesperson Andrew Willis said.

In such an unprecedented circumstance it is incumbent on me to uphold the integrity of the electoral process

This is the first time Elections Ontario has ever taken this step, either under the Elections Act or the Elections Finances Act.

“I believe that in such an unprecedented circumstance it is incumbent on me to uphold the integrity of the electoral process,” Essensa wrote at the start of a lengthy report explaining his thinking. He writes that to find an “apparent contravention” he “must be satisfied, based on the evidence obtained in the investigation, that there is a prima facie case of a contravention. This means I must be aware of sufficient facts that, if proven correct, would constitute a contravention” of either election act.

It could mark the first time anyone is charged under Ontario’s current elections law, said Boris Bytensky, a lawyer with Adler Bytensky Prutschi Shikhman, the same firm representing former MP Dean Del Mastro in his election spending case.

I suspect that charges are coming and that charges are coming under the Elections Act

“I suspect that charges are coming and that charges are coming under the Elections Act,” he said. If that happens and they are found guilty, he adds, “jail time is likely.”

There’s the Del Mastro case, where he was recently founding guilty of violating election law in 2008, and Thursday the Crown recommended 12 months in jail. There’s also Michael Sona’s conviction in the robocalls case during the 2011 election, for which he was sentenced to nine months. Bytensky said there seems to be a penchant to throw the book at electoral offenders.

“I think there’s this whole desire to clean up the electoral process and ensure its as transparent as possible,” Bytensky said.

The Ontario Provincial Police also continue a separate criminal investigation. Offenses under Ontario’s Elections Act are regulatory, not criminal, but can carry serious penalties, Bytensky explained. Other provincial offenses, such as careless driving, can also lead to time behind bars.

Criminal Code offenses from the OPP probed are less likely because the relevant sections related to bribery of an election official are among the very few that require the direct authorization of the Attorney General of Canada, he said. That could turn into a very political process for an offense that Bytensky said is likely more easily prosecuted as a provincial offense, which would give the provincial attorney general oversight of the process. That office has already forwarded the Elections Ontario report to the OPP for consideration.

Ontario Attorney General Madeleine Meilleur has indicated political staff will not be involved in that process. A statement from her ministry says the Assistant Deputy Attorney General, the province’s chief prosecutor, will forward relevant information to police. If officers decide to lay charges or require legal advice, independent prosecutors will be brought in.

Bytensky said external prosecutors often come from out of province or the province hires criminal lawyers who are also authorized to prosecute cases.

The opposition at Queen’s Park are demanding Wynne fire or suspend Sorbara as the parallel investigations proceed.

“When will the Premier do the right thing and cut these bad apples loose?” said PC house leader Steve Clark during question period.

NDP leader Andrea Horwath admonished the premier, saying she’d “lost her way.” She also said, “They broke the law. When will the Premier do the right thing and ask for their jobs?”

The Liberals have defended Sorbara as acting as a party official offering party appointments and not as a member of the premier’s staff when she was speaking to Olivier. A statement from the party reads: “As we have said repeatedly, any suggestion that anything was offered in exchange for any action is false.”

TORONTO — Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne and her deputy chief of staff will meet with police investigators, the premier’s office said Monday, as the Liberals denied allegations they broke the law in the lead-up to a recent byelection.

“We’ve been clear that the authorities have our full co-operation, and we are confident that after Premier Wynne and Pat Sorbara meet with the investigators, they will reach the same conclusion,” Ms. Wynne’s spokeswoman, Zita Astravas, said Monday in an email.

The Ontario Provincial Police are investigating allegations that Liberal officials offered their Sudbury candidate from the June election a job or appointment late last year in exchange for not running in last Thursday’s byelection.

Ms. Wynne appointed former NDP MP Glenn Thibeault, who won the byelection, instead of holding a nomination.

The spurned candidate, Andrew Olivier, is quadriplegic and records many conversations because he can’t take notes, so he has put the audio of his talks with two Liberals — including Pat Sorbara, the premier’s deputy chief of staff — online, saying they back up his claims.

Earlier Monday, deputy premier Deb Matthews said she is “absolutely convinced” the Liberals did nothing criminal in behind-the-scenes talks ahead of the byelection.

Ms. Matthews admitted she hasn’t listened to Mr. Olivier’s audio recordings, but said she is confident the allegations are false.

“I am absolutely convinced that there was no breach,” she said. “I have not listened to the tapes. But I’ve seen enough.”

Progressive Conservative House leader Steve Clark said the Liberals “gave up their integrity” to win the Sudbury seat.

“Anybody who listens to those tapes hears the discussion and the offer,” he said.

‘I have not listened to the tapes. But I’ve seen enough’

Media reports said provincial police believe two Liberals broke the law, according to a police document sworn before a judge to get a production order for evidence. The police allegations have not been tested in court, and no charges have been laid.

The premier will not be asking Ms. Sorbara to leave her post, Ms. Astravas has said. Ms. Wynne has maintained no specific offer was made to Mr. Olivier, saying they were trying to keep him active in the party after Mr. Thibeault’s appointment was already decided.

NDP House leader Gilles Bisson said that’s a “Liberal spin.”

“It’s pretty clear when you listen to the tape and you read the transcript … [Ms. Sorbara] is trying to sound out what it is [Mr. Olivier] would be interested in,” Mr. Bisson said. “She’s very categorical in what she’s doing.”

Elections Ontario is also investigating the Liberals’ alleged actions, which the opposition parties say amount to bribery.

Ms. Matthews, also the president of the treasury board, said the OPP investigation in no way affects bargaining with the force, which began this month.

It is one of many major public-sector unions in bargaining as Ontario seeks “net zero” wage increases. Ms. Matthews said in a speech Monday that offsetting any wage increases will be one of the ways Ontario plans to eliminate its $12.5-billion deficit by 2017-18.

She also spoke of “maximizing government assets” and a line-by-line review of program spending, though she vowed there will be no “across the board cuts.”

TORONTO — New Democrats reacted with anger Tuesday after one of their MPs announced he was leaving the party to run for the Ontario Liberals in a yet-to-be called provincial byelection.

“I am proud to announce that I will be running as the Ontario Liberal party candidate in the upcoming byelection in my community of Sudbury,” Glenn Thibeault said in a statement.

Thibeault’s decision, which comes less than a year before the next federal election, is seen as a blow to NDP Leader Tom Mulcair and his provincial counterpart, Andrea Horwath, whose newest member of the provincial legislature quit after five months on the job, prompting the need for a byelection.

It also came one day after the Liberal candidate in the June 12 Ontario election, Andrew Olivier, said he was offered a government appointment or job to stop pursuing the nomination for the Sudbury byelection.

HandoutGlenn Thibeault

“It says a lot about the values of (Premier) Kathleen Wynne and the Liberal party,” said Ontario NDP house leader Gilles Bisson.

“They are willing to allegedly bribe a lifelong Liberal to make way for a turncoat MP who is more interested in his own career than the people of Sudbury.”

Mulcair has yet to comment on the defection of one of his MPs to the Ontario Liberals.

“People are cynical about these kinds of actions,” NDP caucus chair Irene Mathyssen said in a statement. “I understand the allure of power for some, but don’t really understand his choice since Ms. Wynne’s Liberals have proven time and again they are not a progressive government.”

Wynne said she was “thrilled” that Thibeault agreed to quit the NDP and run for the Liberals in Sudbury, and took a shot at the New Democrats by promising “stable” Liberal representation for the city.

“He has a strong track record of serving his constituents and championing the needs of his community,” Wynne said in a statement. “I know that the residents of Sudbury deserve and are eager to have stable representative at Queen’s Park as soon as possible.”

Thibeault said the decision to run for the Ontario Liberals was not an easy one.

“The need for this byelection was sudden and unexpected, and I have come to the decision to move to provincial politics after much reflection and discussion with those people close to me,” he said.

In his statement, Thibeault said serving his community remained his priority.

“It is my belief that I can continue to do so from a different vantage point working as part of the Ontario Liberal government.”

Olivier said Monday that Wynne had personally told him the Liberals wanted another candidate in Sudbury, even though he’d lost by less than 1,000 votes to New Democrat Joe Cimino in what had been a long-held Liberal riding.

I understand the allure of power for some, but don’t really understand his choice

Then Pat Sorbara, the Ontario Liberal campaign director, contacted him and “reiterated suggestions of a job or appointment,” Olivier said.

Wynne admitted that she reached out to Olivier to let him know the Liberals had another candidate in mind, but insisted there were no specific offers made.

The Progressive Conservatives have asked the Ontario Provincial Police to investigate Olivier’s claims of a job offer, while the NDP asked Elections Ontario to look into the situation.

Cimino surprised everyone by resigning in November after just five months as an MPP, citing family reasons for his decision.

Wynne has until next May to call the byelection in Sudbury, and said Tuesday she would announce the date in the new year.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/ontarios-open-and-transparent-government-video/feed0stdKathleen-WynneRobyn Urback: Dalton McGuinty landing a new gig as lobbyist would be funny if it weren't so obnoxioushttp://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/robyn-urback-dalton-mcguinty-landing-a-new-gig-as-lobbyist-would-be-funny-if-it-werent-so-noxious
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/robyn-urback-dalton-mcguinty-landing-a-new-gig-as-lobbyist-would-be-funny-if-it-werent-so-noxious#commentsWed, 17 Sep 2014 18:01:24 +0000http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/?p=163543

Ontario’s so-called “education premier” is back, and this time, he’s on the other end of the bargaining table. Former premier Dalton McGuinty has registered as a lobbyist for an educational software company called Desire2Learn, which operates out of Kitchener, Ontario. According to the provincial lobbyist registry, McGuinty signed up on August 26 for his new role with the company, which was awarded $3-million in Ontario government contracts last year and a $4.25-million grant in 2011.

“Nothing to see here!” say the Ontario Liberals, who have jumped to McGuinty’s defense. Treasury Board President Deb Matthews pointed out that McGuinty waited 18 months after leaving office to become a registered lobbyist, and according to Ontario’s rules, politicians need only a 12-month cooling-off period before lobbying the government. Education Minister Liz Sandals echoed her support for McGuinty, saying that the former premier has every right to lobby the government on behalf of a private company.

Indeed, he does. But as suspended Senator Mike Duffy might soon be able to attest, there is a marked difference between that which is “within the rules,” and that which is palatable. McGuinty has paid heed to the former and given a cheshire grin to the latter. After leaving a premiership marred by scandal and waste, he is back to lobby the government he once led. It would be funny if it weren’t so utterly noxious.

The optics are particularly egregious considering McGuinty’s years in office were repeatedly marked by allegations of questionable dealings and special favours. An auditor general’s report into Ontario’s eHealth agency in 2009 found the government handed out contracts to certain preferred companies “without giving other firms a chance to compete.” Ornge, Ontario’s air ambulance service, was also smothered under scandal (as well as waste, nepotism, mismanagement and lack of oversight) under then-CEO Chris Mazza, who allegedly handed out contracts to his girlfriend and a doctor friend at Mount Sinai Hospital. Another auditor general’s report released in December 2013 — after McGuinty had left office but concerning his time as premier — reported gross nepotism at Ontario Power Generation. And even recently, current Premier Kathleen Wynne’s brother-in-law was acting as interim CEO of eHealth until September 2014. One would think Mr. McGuinty would have had enough of bad optics, but there’s his name in black in white on the Ontario lobby registry.

The notion of fair contract negotiations is about as realistic as the Liberal’s promise to balance the budget by 2017-18

It’s not particularly extraordinary for a former politician to make the leap from public office to lobbying. Jay Hill, former Tory MP, retired from politics in 2010 and become a consultant and lobbyist in B.C. the following year. At the federal level, public officials are prohibited from becoming lobbyists for a minimum of five years after leaving office, but that prohibition does not apply to former politicians who lobby provincial governments. Barry Campbell, former Liberal MP, succeeded by Carolyn Bennett also became a lobbyist for various companies after leaving politics. And former federal Tory Chuck Strahl held both positions, though he made a mess of the roles by conflating the boundaries.

McGuinty’s case, however, is extraordinary for a number of reasons. For one, he will be lobbying the government he led, not simply served in, less than two years ago. Two, he will be dealing with the very same people with which he shared seats at Queen’s Park, not the least of whom include Education Minister Liz Sandals, who acted as parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Education between 2007 and 2010, when Dalton McGuinty was premier. And three, he will be lobbying a government trying to escape the atrocious record and cronyism he oversaw. Taken together, the notion of fair contract negotiations is about as realistic as the Liberals’ promise to balance the budget by 2017-18.

Mr. McGuinty is well within the rules in his decision to lobby the government he once led, 18 months after leaving office. But all that tells me is that the rules have to change.

TORONTO — Ontario’s opposition parties said Wednesday the Liberal government is not being honest with people about its plans to “maximize” the value of provincial assets like the Liquor Control Board, Ontario Power Generation and Hydro One.

This week’s provincial budget talked about “unlocking” value from government assets, while the Liberal re-election platform stated they would generate $3.15 billion through “asset optimization.”

Both the Progressive Conservatives and New Democrats said they wanted to know what the buzz words really mean, and what exactly the Liberals plan to do to raise that amount.

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“They certainly are not being straight up with the people of this province about which of the people’s assets are going to get sold off to come up with this sum,” said NDP Leader Andrea Horwath.

“It’s a pretty specific sum, and they had to get that number from somewhere.”

The Tories said they aren’t opposed to trying to squeeze more value out of provincial assets, as long as they stay in public hands.

Interim PC Leader Jim Wilson asked Premier Kathleen Wynne during question period how many jobs would be lost as the government looks for efficiencies at the LCBO and its electricity agencies.

“Here’s a chance to tell employees at the LCBO, OPG and OPA just how many of their jobs are on the line,” said Wilson.

Had the government of the day had such a process in place when they were looking at the 407, I believe there would not have been such a bad deal for the people of Ontario

“Here’s a chance to tell the lenders and credit rating agencies exactly what you mean by optimize and maximize.”

Wynne suggested it was a bit rich for the Conservatives to ask about job losses when they just campaigned on a platform to slash 100,000 public-sector positions, and said no decisions on asset sales will be made until after an expert panel reports.

“We have been very honest, and we are honestly concerned that the assets that are owned by the people of Ontario, that they be optimized, and that those revenues and those assets work for the people of Ontario so that we can reinvest in the infrastructure that is needed,” she told the legislature.

The previous Progressive Conservative government should have appointed a panel to review assets before they sold off Highway 407 in 1999, added Wynne.

“Had the government of the day had such a process in place when they were looking at the 407, I believe there would not have been such a bad deal for the people of Ontario,” she said. “There are billions and billions of dollars in revenue [from the toll highway] that are lost to the people of Ontario in what was a public asset.”

We’re dedicating all the revenues that come and whatever maximization or leverage that we may take from it, that will all go to the Trillium Trust

Finance Minister Charles Sousa later told reporters the government would want to retain majority ownership in the LCBO and the electricity agencies, even if it decides to invite pension funds to invest in the provincial agencies.

“The intent is to protect those interests for the public, recognizing that they have strong revenues,” he said.

“You don’t unleash or remove a strong revenue source for government and for taxpayers. Their value, frankly, is in the ownership structure that we now have.”

The government has promised to eliminate a $12.5-billion deficit within three years, but Sousa said all revenue generated by maximizing the value of assets will go into the Trillium Trust to be reinvested in transit and infrastructure projects.

The Tories complained the legislation has a loophole stating “the regulations may require that a portion of the net proceeds of disposition be credited to the Trillium Trust,” which they said would allow the Liberals to use the money any way they want.

But Sousa said there was no loophole.

“No, it’s all going to the Trillium Trust,” he said.

“We’re dedicating all the revenues that come and whatever maximization or leverage that we may take from it, that will all go to the Trillium Trust.”

The government also plans to sell some of its real estate holdings, including the LCBO and OPG headquarters in downtown Toronto, as well as the shares it purchased in General Motors during the recession.

TORONTO — Ontario’s newly elected Liberals steamrolled ahead Monday with the same big-spending budget that triggered the June 12 election, despite opposition warnings that the $130.4-billion plan will trigger a downgrade of the province’s debt rating and lead to massive public-sector job cuts.

The Liberals didn’t even bother putting a new cover on the deja-vu document they had tabled back in May, its passage a foregone conclusion now that the party controls the legislature with a majority of seats.

“Ontarians gave our government a strong mandate to implement the budget and the plan that we took to the people,” said Finance Minister Charles Sousa.

The Liberals promise to spend $130 billion on infrastructure over a decade — including $29 billion for public transit and transportation projects — $2.5 billion in corporate grants to lure and keep businesses in the province and $1 billion to build a transportation route to the Ring of Fire mineral deposit in northern Ontario.

They also pledge to build new college and university campuses, create spaces for 15,000 more post-secondary students and increase the number of apprentices training in Ontario.

The province plans to hike taxes for individuals earning more than $150,000 as well as levies on aviation fuel and tobacco, and create an Ontario pension plan that will require contributions from both employees and companies.

Spending is forecast to jump by $3.4 billion this year, $900 million more than projected in the 2013 budget, with program spending expected to climb to $119.4 billion. That’ll push up the deficit to $12.5 billion this year, but the Liberals insist they’ll balance the books in 2017-18.

They are touting the budget, which has slowly leaked out since late March, as a plan that will provide the necessary cash injection to grow Ontario’s economy while holding the line on public sector compensation and finding other savings to staunch the red ink on schedule.

“It’s easy for some to suggest, don’t spend the money, don’t invest in transit and all these other things because it’s too expensive,” said Finance Minister Charles Sousa. “It’s more expensive if we don’t do it today.”

But the opposition parties warn it’s a ticking time bomb that will herald a new wave of public sector job cuts and provoke a downgrade of Ontario’s debt rating, jacking up borrowing costs that are already consuming about $11 billion a year — its fourth-largest expense.

Ontario’s net debt is expected to climb $20.1 billion to $289.3 billion this year, a stunning 40 per cent of gross domestic product.

Moody’s changed its outlook on Ontario’s debt rating to negative from stable in early July, saying it could be downgraded if the province “fails to provide clear signals of its ability and willingness to implement the required measures to redress the current fiscal pressures.”

Ontario can’t afford such a “disingenuous” budget that hikes both taxes and spending, said interim Progressive Conservative Leader Jim Wilson.

“It is immoral to give people false hope with a budget … only to have to take away services and programs when the lenders put a gun to your head and say, ’Your line of credit has dried up,”’ he said.

The budget also disguises massive cuts in the public sector the Liberals will make to balance the books, said NDP Leader Andrea Horwath.

“You simply have to scratch the surface and you see some real problems,” said Horwath, who suffered a backlash from some NDP supporters when she rejected the budget in May.

“One of the big problems that we see is a lack of any new plan for good jobs, we see a fire sale of public assets, we see huge implications around cuts to jobs. None of these things are progressive.”

Horwath pointed to a Statistics Canada report that Ontario shed 33,900 jobs in June, saying more job cuts are on the way.

But Sousa dismissed the suggestion.

“We’ll make transformational changes where necessary, but it’s not our intent to purposely go after the public sector,” he said.

The Liberals did make minor changes to the budget bill, folding in other pieces of legislation that died when the snap election was called. They include removing domestic content requirements for solar and wind energy projects, hiking the aviation fuel tax from 2.7 cents a litre to 6.7 cents over four years and freezing MPP salaries until the deficit is eliminated.

The just-concluded Ontario provincial election campaign took place under a dark fiscal shadow: For years, former premier Dalton McGuinty had propped up his short-term popularity by borrowing heavily and inflating the province’s debt load. His successor, Kathleen Wynne, might have put a decisive stop to this practice. But under her watch, Ontario continued to endure 11-figure deficits. During the election campaign, rather than propose any sort of clear plan for balancing the budget, Ms. Wynne promised fiscal responsibility only in the vaguest of terms — all the while fear-mongering over Progressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak’s more concrete plan to reduce the province’s bloated payrolls to 2009 levels.

Now that the election is over, it is time for all of the province’s major-party leaders — including Ms. Wynne, and the NDP’s Andrea Horwath, whose campaign platform showed some surprising signs of fiscal common sense — to put aside partisan name-calling, and co-operate on a plan to save the province from going the way of Greece, California, Quebec and other fiscally dysfunctional jurisdictions.

The Liberals will form a majority government. That means the province’s future effectively rests on the willingness of Ms. Wynne’s party to face fiscal reality — instead of kicking the debt can down the road, Dalton McGuinty-style, to be paid off by future generations.

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One of the reasons why solid fiscal leadership has been so hard to come by in Ontario is that the free-spending left — cheered on by the Toronto Star and other similarly minded outlets — has done such an effective job of savaging the legacy of former Ontario premier Mike Harris. Mr. Harris, who came to power after the massive deficit era of Bob Rae’s NDP, slashed spending. The moves were greeted with horror by the unions and the media, but Mr. Harris got the job done: While the debt had doubled under Mr. Rae in the early 1990s, it flattened during the Harris years, from 1995 to 2002 — but then began skyrocketing under Mr. McGuinty later that decade.

Fiscally, Mr. Harris should be seen as a hero. Instead, the left uses his name as an epithet (along with “Tea Party,” and “U.S.-style”) to stifle debate on the province’s long-term challenges.

The same pattern has played out on other issues, too: One of the main reasons why Mr. McGuinty was so spineless when it came to upholding the rule of law in the face of native thugs terrorizing the community of Caledonia, Ont., is that he feared that his actions would earn comparisons with the ejection of native protesters from Ipperwash Provincial Park in 1995 (during which protester Dudley George was killed in a confrontation with police).

Forget Mike Harris: Jean Chrétien proved you don’t need to be a conservative hawk to save a balance sheet

Likewise, every prospective cut to public services in the province is held up by the left as a prelude to an episode similar to the Walkerton, Ont., tainted-water tragedy of 2000, which Mr. Harris’ critics tried to blame on the Progressive Conservatives’ Common Sense Revolution, even before the facts were known. Early in the 2014 election campaign, in fact, Ms. Wynne told a Walkerton audience that “cuts have consequences.”

This one dog-whistle call to left-wing voters pretty much sums up the spurious fiscal logic of Ontario’s left. According to this view, any serious attempt to rein in costs will lead to apocalypse. One can see why Steven Del Duca, a Liberal MPP seeking re-election in the riding of Vaughan, would have thought it was perfectly reasonable to distribute campaign literature showing a maniacal Mr. Hudak laughing as a hospital blows up in the background (Mr. Del Duca has since apologized).

And yet, despite all of this, there is hope. During the election campaign, Mr. Hudak broke the taboo against offering specific targets for cutting the size of the public service. Ms. Horwath, in her attempt to court the moderate middle, shook off the bald-faced socialism of old-school NDP campaigns past. And even Ms. Wynne gave a nod to reality when she promised (however airily) that the Liberals would seek to eliminate the deficit if she is returned as premier. “After boosting program spending by $3-billion this year, the Liberal party leader plans to hold the line the next three years in a bid to eliminate the deficit,” Business News Network reported. “Given population growth, a 2017 Liberal government would drop spending by the most per person since former premier Mike Harris won election on deficit elimination in 1995.”

Obviously, we have our doubts about whether Ms. Wynne was sincere on that pledge. But would it really be so crazy to think that a principled Ontario premier — even a Liberal — could tackle the province’s deficit?

Remember that it was Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin who successfully tackled the disastrous state of Canada’s finances in the mid-’90s — launching a reform program that arguably was just as far-reaching and austere as anything Mr. Harris did. And it was Bill Clinton who balanced the U.S. budget, for a time. Newly elected Liberal Premier Philippe Couillard may manage the same trick in Quebec. Left-of-centre politicians can, and occasionally do, balance the books — even if, in so doing, they alienate their hardcore activist supporters.

If party leaders look beyond their narrow constituencies, perhaps they can engage with one another in a good-faith effort to save the balance sheet of a province that has been bleeding red ink for the last decade. If so, then the election will have proven to be a win for all of Ontario’s voters.

A U.S. wind power developer that is seeking $653-million in damages under a NAFTA challenge accuses the government of Ontario of manipulating Green Energy Act rules to benefit the interests of Liberal-connected firms, according to court documents obtained by the National Post.

The court filing, recently made public in the case that pits Mesa Power, a Texas-based developer owned by U.S. financier T. Boone Pickens, against the government, alleges Ontario replaced “transparent” criteria for the selection of energy projects with “political favoritism, cronyism and local preference.”

Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesU.S. financier T. Boone Pickens

At issue in the NAFTA arbitration are changes made to the Green Energy Act in 2011. They allowed wind developers a brief window in which they could change the location at which their proposed projects would connect to the transmission grid. NextEra, a multinational renewables firm that was represented to the government by lobbyist Bob Lopinksi, a former senior staffer in the office of Dalton McGuinty, changed their connection points and was eventually awarded more than $2-billion worth of power contracts. Mesa Power says in its court filing that the change effectively bumped its projects out of line, costing it sunk costs and lost future profits.

“The rules were changed to suit one applicant to the detriment of another,” the court document claims.

“The rules change was also specifically designed with NextEra in mind,” says the 243-page NAFTA document called the Memorial of the Investor. It was filed last year but released publicly last month. “On a number of occasions,” the document says, “the Minister of Energy’s Office took explicit steps to ensure the process was being executed to the benefit of NextEra.”

“NextEra also gained assistance through the Ontario Premier’s office,” the filing alleges. “The Premier’s office injected itself into the [Feed-in-Tariff] program, and began expressing its political preferences for matters that where entirely within the regulatory realm of the [Ontario Power Authority].

The Mesa Power document also claims that NextEra “had direct access to the Premier’s Office.” It says that NextEra met with former McGuinty aides Jamison Steeve and Sean Mullin in October, 2010. Both men would later be involved in the negotiations surrounding the cancellation of gas-plants in the greater Toronto area and the payments to the affected firms.

Opposition critics of the Green Energy Act have long contended that the governing Liberals used explosive growth in renewable energy since 2009 to steer contracts toward favoured firms and Liberal insiders. Various companies have also taken the government to court over the frequent changes to the Feed-in-Tariff program, but the government has maintained that it is allowed to make policy changes even if they negatively impact green-energy investors. Ontario also lost a WTO ruling that found the “domestic content” requirements in the Green Energy Act discriminated against foreign-owned firms and were a violation of trade agreements.

“The treatment of Mesa in this case,” the court filing says, “is just another episode in a saga of maladministration, scandal, political interference, manipulation and contempt for the rule of law that dominated Ontario until the resignation of the Premier [McGuinty] early in 2013.”

Ontario, which is represented at the NAFTA tribunal by the government of Canada, says in its filing that “there is no evidence to support the claimant’s allegations.”

“In managing and implementing procurement processes, decision-makers are often forced to make adjustments at key junctures … to best satisfy the policy objectives of government,” the government filing says. “Such adjustments often result in winners and losers … as changes operate to the benefit of some and detriment of others.”

The government response dismisses claims of “wrong-doing” and says the changes that impacted Mesa Power were “nothing more than a commercial consequence of legitimate policy choices.”

A spokesperson for the campaign of Kathleen Wynne, citing a Mesa document that was presented to a local council while its projects were in the planning stages, says the Texas company knew all along that there would be a period in which connection points could be changed. The process wasn’t changed to benefit anyone, the campaign official said.

ED is a common complaint in Ontario, particularly among men over the age of 50, anyone who pays taxes or receives hydro bills, young people, women, the elderly, the employed and those without jobs. ED is closely associated with 11 years of Liberal government. Watch the video to learn more.

The gas-plant scandal is proving to be hard for Kathleen Wynne to outrun.

The broad strokes of the Thursday revelations that provincial police are investigating possible breach of trust charges against a senior aide to former premier Dalton McGuinty should not be that surprising to anyone who has paid attention to the file over the past year.

Testimony before ongoing justice committee hearings, and a report from the information and privacy commissioner, have made it clear that some of Mr. McGuinty’s closest advisors, including former chief of staff David Livingston, went to considerable effort to ensure that there was no digital record of their communications, the better to frustrate efforts by opposition MPPs to find out which Liberals knew what — and when — about cancellation costs that were five times higher than they had first stated publicly.

But still: criminal charges? That might be just the thing that boils a complex file down to its essence in the minds of voters who long ago tired of the scandal. And the news no doubt caused backs to stiffen throughout the NDP caucus, as it again considers propping up the minority Liberals through a third budget cycle.

Police documents that were part of the information to obtain a search warrant used to seize computer hardware formerly in the office of Mr. McGuinty say that Mr. Livingston directed efforts to have an outside expert access the hard drives of as many as two dozen computer terminals. The outside expert, said by police to be the boyfriend of another former McGuinty staffer, was able to use a special administrator password that would have allowed the deleting of files. The police information, which has not been tested in court, was released after a challenge from media lawyers.

Cabinet secretary Peter Wallace, the head of the Ontario Public Service, told police in the summer that Mr. Livingston had sought the administrator access, and mused about bringing in outside help, suggestions that he found hard to believe.

“It’s one of those things that that you really don’t take seriously because, it’s like, really?,” the police document quotes Mr. Wallace as saying. “Like, that’s such a piece of s—. Like, I’m not going to write you a memo saying don’t do that, because you already know, don’t do that.”

Gladwin County Sheriff/The Associated PressMMA fighter Charlie Rowan, left, and his girlfriend Rosalinda Martinez and Michael Bowman, right, were charged, Friday, March 22, 2013 with the robbery of a mid-Michigan gun business that left its owner with severe head injuries.

Mr. Wallace’s discussion with investigators was a fair bit more colourful than his testimony before the justice committee last June, but the essence of what he said was the same. Then, he told MPPs, since he had no oversight over political staff, he provided “informal advice” to Mr. Livingston that, at a time of heightened scrutiny, it would look beyond curious if senior McGuinty staffers suddenly had no email trails.

“It would leave the government open to the inference that is being drawn right now,” Mr. Wallace put it diplomatically, the inference being that it would look like someone was trying to cover something up.

Asked how Mr. McGuinty’s chief of staff received this guidance, Mr. Wallace told the committee: “I don’t recall him expressing great deals of satisfaction that the advice was particularly useful to him.”

That’s pretty much the nub of the story, then: Mr. McGuinty’s right hand went to the province’s top bureaucrat, and asked about getting extraordinary IT access. The civil servants suggested that wasn’t the way things were done, they were rebuffed, and the access was granted. Police believe the seized hard drives will show whether a criminal act occurred in the deletion of public records. The other shoe has not yet fully dropped.

And, as it has been with each of two Auditor-General’s reports on the costs of the gas-plant cancellations that showed the true total costs to Ontarians to be far higher than the Liberals had initially said, and again with the privacy commissioner’s incredulous report on the “routine” deletion of emails among former McGuinty staff, contrary to government rules, it is Ms. Wynne who is left to appear shocked by what her predecessor has wrought.

The details in the police document first emerged during Question Period on Thursday, and the Premier, not normally at a loss for words, only responded that the allegations were “serious” and that her office would co-operate with police.

By Thursday afternoon, she stood before her office door at Queen’s Park, looking grim, to tell reporters that the police allegations “if true, are disturbing” and that they were “not the way a government is run.” Ms. Wynne said that Mr. Livingston had never worked for her office, but she took no questions on the matter.

A 23-year-old financial high-flyer who spent £200,000 ($314,000) on a round of drinks has run into trouble with his unemployed mother[caption id="attachment_149374" align="alignright" width="310" caption="PLANET PHOTOS"]<img class="size-full wp-image-149374" title="Alex-Hope" src="http://wpmedia.news.nationalpost.com/2012/03/alex-hope.jpg&quot; alt="" width="310" height="465" />[/caption]
A 23-year-old financial high-flyer who spent £200,000 ($314,000) on a round of drinks has run into trouble with his unemployed mother.
Alex Hope, a foreign currency trader in Britain, splashed out for the drinks in a Liverpool nightclub after reportedly receiving a bumper payout in the markets.
According to British press reports he spent £125,000 ($197,000) on a single bottle of champagne — a 30-litre bottle of Armand de Brignac Midas champagne — the world’s most expensive bottle of bubbly.
The Daily Mail said two waiters were needed to carry in the 99lb Nebuchadnezzar-size bottle, which is the equivalent of 40 standard ones. He also ordered 40 single bottles of Ace of Spade champagne.
His mother, Tina, 53, who lives in a modest three-bedroom townhouse in Deptford, south London, told the Daily Express, “I just hope he didn’t drink it all himself. I should suppose not. He’s a very good boy. I’m surprised by all this.”
The Daily Mail also reported that on his blog, alexhopefx, which is now restricted, he said, “Alex knows and loves the FX market. Throughout his youth, his passions were football and ... currencies!
“At the age of 11, Alex had a deep-rooted interest in the different currencies and relished trips across Europe where he could explore this interest first hand. Opening his first account with just £500, in one day he’d doubled his money and turned the £500 into £1,100 by trading gold.
“A talented, charismatic and thoroughly likeable man, Alex Hope exudes knowledge and you can’t help but respect and admire this self-taught and self-made young trader. Watch out trading markets, Alex Hope is kicking up a storm!”
Added to his bill was a service charge of £18,540 ($29,173).
National Post

After PC leader Tim Hudak took the opportunity to lay the document-deletion scandal at the Premier’s feet, alleging that since the police investigation covers the transition period between when Mr. McGuinty’s staff moved out of the Premier’s office and her staff moved in, “clearly [Ms. Wynne] must have known about it.”

Three hours later, Ms. Wynne met with reporters again, calling those allegations baseless and denying that she had anything to do with Mr. Livingston or any knowledge of what he might have done.

Mr. Hudak and his energy critic, Lisa McLeod, repeatedly called on the NDP to “do the right thing” and vote with the PCs to force an election — the expected spring budget would be the likely first opportunity to do so — but Andrea Horwath made no such commitment. She told reporters that she was “shocked” by the allegations, but said no decision had been made on the budget. “There’s no doubt those considerations are in play,” she said.

One wonders what it would take to truly push the NDP leader over the edge here. This scandal is so far removed from the early days in which the Liberal defence was that other parties wanted to cancel the plants, too. Only the Liberals cancelled them, then blatantly misled the public on the costs of those decisions. Only the Liberals set about getting rid of the electronic records of those decisions. And only the Liberals, or one of them at least, is under criminal investigation.

Whether Ms. Wynne deserves to be punished for the sins of Mr. McGuinty is a fair question. But the public at least deserves the chance to consider it. For the NDP, the question has for two years been about what would finally cause them to topple the government.

In the generally unremarkable third and final installment of Leslie Nielsen’s Naked Gun series of cop spoof films, one scene still manages to get a chuckle out of me every time. The movie’s bad guy has just stormed the stage at the Academy Awards, and takes the celebrity audience hostage. “Freeze and nobody gets hurt!” he yells, firing his gun into the air for emphasis. Moments later, the body of a technician — struck by the bullet — plummets down to the stage, landing with a crash.

“Well,” the bad guy clarifies, “from now on.”

If there’s anyone out there that may need a good laugh these days, it’s the Ontario Liberal Party. The province’s economic recovery remains anemic, public spending is still unsustainable, the opposition parties are increasingly restless and it seems every week brings new revelations about the party’s costly gas-plants gambit, where perhaps as much as a billion dollars was spent to not build two power plants that had become political liabilities. It’s depressing stuff, and you could forgive them for popping a comedy into the DVD player at the end of a long day.

But they shouldn’t be taking lessons in governance from the adventures of Frank, Ed and Nordberg down at Police Squad, which seems to be the case. Earlier this week, the Liberals announced a blue ribbon panel on open government. They want a handful of respected Ontarians to consider how to make government data more easily accessible, and understandable, to the public at large.

This is just the latest in a series of three dozen expert consultation panels that Premier Kathleen Wynne has established over the past nine months, much to the irritation of the opposition, who rightly point out that if the Liberals don’t know what Ontarians want by now, they haven’t been paying attention. But the steadily climbing number of panels and special task forces doesn’t change the fact that open governance is a worthy goal. The approach may be typical of Wynne’s all-consultation, all-the-time style of leadership, but the cause is legitimate.

And, in a move straight out of the Naked Gun, the Liberals are doing their best to resist their own initiative.

Even as Wynne was excitedly announcing the open government panel (in front of a podium sign that misspelled “government” as “goverment” — another slapstick touch), Liberal MPPs were resisting opposition efforts to force government disclosure of documents relating to the upcoming Pan Am Games, scheduled to take place in the Toronto area in 2015. There have already been some disquieting reports about Pan Am executives, appointed by the province to organize the games, getting a bit expense happy on the province’s tab, and standing to benefit from huge bonus packages. There are also reports that the games themselves are running over budget, and it’s unclear who’ll be making up the difference. The opposition parties are demanding disclosure of thousands of documents that will hopefully at least establish how much money has already been spent and how much more is likely to be.

And the Liberals, champions of open government as they are, are fighting back.

‘We’ll open the government!’ they cry as they scramble to keep some things hidden from the public. ‘From now on,’ they add after

Or they were, at any rate. The opposition parties, who do have an edge over the minority Liberals, have worked their way through all the procedural obstacles the government put in their path. The documents should start coming out shortly, but only because the Liberals on the finance committee ran out of excuses. The best they were able to achieve was a longer period of time than the opposition had originally proposed for the release of the documents.

The Liberals say that they’re totally into disclosure, but they wanted the request for documents to be more narrow. Sure … but why? Open government and narrow disclosure don’t exactly go hand in hand. “Narrowly open government,” even spelled correctly, isn’t likely to adorn a podium set before the Premier anytime soon. If the government believes in open government, it should believe in it always, and starting now.

But it seems that the Liberal boasts of their interest in open government owe a lot to a bad guy from a silly slapstick film. “We’ll open the government!” they cry as they scramble to keep some things hidden from the public. “From now on,” they add after.

That’s not how it works. If Premier Wynne is truly in favour of putting more information into the hands of the public, she should instruct her MPPs to hand over anything they legally can, on demand. An expert committee is no substitute for living up to your own ideals.

TORONTO — The $585-million price tag for the cancellation of two energy projects in Ontario is expected to rise even higher Tuesday when the province’s new auditor general releases a special report.

A previous auditor’s report on the Liberal government’s decision to kill a partially built gas plant in Mississauga in the middle of the 2011 election campaign put the cost of that project at $275 million, $85 million higher than the Liberals had been claiming.

Newly appointed auditor general Bonnie Lysyk’s report will detail the cost of cancelling a gas plant in Oakville and moving it to Kingston area — which the Liberals put at $40 million, but the Ontario Power Authority estimated at $310 million.

The auditor signalled the same criteria from the Mississauga plant report would be used in examining the cost of cancelling the Oakville plant, which means lowering projected savings the government had been claiming for the 20-year contract with the plant’s developers.

“They (Liberals) have at every single instance tried to prevent us from getting the true costs,” Progressive Conservative energy critic Lisa MacLeod complained Monday.

“This strikes at the very heart of our democracy, if a government can spend hundreds of millions of dollars to save seats in an election.”

The opposition parties called the decisions to scrap the plants “an expensive Liberal seat saver program” for the 2011 election, when the governing party fell one seat short of a majority, but held on to all five seats around the cancelled energy projects.

“What’s really clear is that this government did the wrong thing when it came to using the gas plant debacle as a way to try to save their own seats,” said NDP Leader Andrea Horwath.

“They moved these plants and didn’t care what the cost would be to taxpayers or rate payers, and they did it for political reasons, and I think that’s the thing that’s most disturbing to folks.

Premier Kathleen Wynne said Monday she asked the auditor to probe the cost of cancelling the Oakville plant so people could get the answers they were looking for.

“There were things that happened in terms of relocation of the gas plants that shouldn’t have happened. I’ve apologized for that,” said Wynne. “I’m not defending those decisions. In fact, I’ve said that there were decisions that were made that shouldn’t have been made.”

Former premier Dalton McGuinty has said he made the decisions to scrap the gas plants, insisting the government was slow to understand that local residents were correct in not wanting the generating stations so close to homes and schools.

Unlike Wynne, McGuinty has refused to apologize for cancelling the two projects.

However, the Tories pointed out that Wynne was one of the cabinet ministers who signed off on the cancellations, and was Liberal campaign co-chair at the time the decisions were made.

“We have asked Kathleen Wynne consistently what the true costs was … only to have been obstructed by her house leader,” said MacLeod. “The information and privacy commissioner was obstructed by that government.”
Privacy commissioner Ann Cavoukian reported in June that top Liberal staff in McGuinty’s office broke the law by deleting all emails related to the cancellation of the two gas plants. A month later, Cavoukian was “dismayed” to learn a number of gas plant emails she was told could not be found were recovered by the government.

The Liberals’ initial refusal to release emails and other correspondence related to the gas plants led to a preliminary finding of contempt of Parliament against the government, and a bitter debate that prompted McGuinty to prorogue the legislature last October and resign as premier.

Horwath warned that Wynne and the Liberals would have to take responsibility for the final price of cancelling the gas plants, but the premier said she wasn’t worried about political fallout.

“It’s not about my political future or our political future; it’s about getting information for the people of Ontario so there’s an understanding of what the cost was in changing the venue of those gas plants,” she said. “I think that this will give us more clarity on the costs and that’s why I asked for the report.”

TORONTO — Ontario’s ombudsman is warning the governing Liberals that unless they live up to their promise to protect patients by regulating non-emergency medical transfers soon, he’ll be forced to re-open his investigation of the industry.

About 400,000 people are transported every year in privately owned vehicles, ombudsman Andre Marin said Tuesday. But nothing’s been done to regulate the sector for two years.

“This is a case where the wheels are literally falling off the bus,” he said after releasing his annual report.

“Some of these vehicles, parts are flying off them. We have patients falling off gurneys. It’s a question of time before there is a major catastrophe.”

Marin said he agreed not to publish his report in 2011 after Premier Kathleen Wynne — then transportation minister — and Health Minister Deb Matthews agreed that it needed to be regulated. The coroner’s been asking for regulation since 1995, he said.

He recently reminded Wynne of her promise, he said. But Transportation Minister Glen Murray wasn’t even aware of the report.

“Since 1995, the government has a history of panicking when the issue comes up — when there’s a crash and someone gets injured or someone gets killed,” Marin said.

“And then as soon as the media fades, the government’s interests stalls in changing the legislation.”

Marin also took aim at other “unfinished business” the Liberals have yet to act on, such as their promised to replace an outdated law that resulted in a “massive” violation of civil rights during the G20 protests in Toronto three years ago.

They’ve also done nothing to give the Special Investigations Unit some teeth in investigating police involved in cases of serious injury or death, he said.

Progress has been made on other fronts, such as dealing with operational stress injuries and suicide among Ontario Provincial Police officers, he said.

Marin is once again urging the government to give him oversight of hospitals, nursing homes, municipalities, universities and school boards, as other provinces do. Former premier Dalton McGuinty told him last year that it was just a matter of time, he said.

He’s had to turn away more than 2,500 complaints about them last year, Marin said. It’s become “an embarrassment.”

“Ontario is a have-not province when it comes to accountability,” he added. “We were very good for talking the talk, but not walking the talk.”

His office received more than 19,000 complaints and inquiries in the past year, up six per cent from the year before, he said.

The report reviewed what his office has done in the past year and updated recent and ongoing investigations by his office.

He’s already launched a new investigation into whether the government is doing enough to protect children in unlicensed daycares, after a toddler died at a home daycare north of Toronto last week.

Education officials have admitted that they failed to follow up on two of three complaints lodged against the daycare.

TORONTO — A newly released confidential document shows that top bureaucrats warned the governing Ontario Liberals in January to step up deficit-fighting measures to meet their targets.

The document, labelled “confidential advice to cabinet,” says even though the government is beating its deficit forecasts, it needs to increase the actions required to meet targets over the next few years.

It also urges the government to draft plans soon to show how it will slay the deficit in 2017-18.

It says ministries have started planning to curb spending over the next two years, but the government needs to start planning up to 2017-18.

The Progressive Conservatives, who obtained the documents, say it shows the Liberals have no plan to lift Ontario out of its fiscal hole.

But the Liberals say they’re routinely provided with worst-case scenario advice that helps them make decisions without compromising public services.

TORONTO — The union representing Ontario’s 76,000 public elementary teachers has reached a tentative agreement with the government that guarantees they’ll be paid the same as counterparts in the French and Catholic school systems starting in 2014-15.

Members of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario make two per cent less than their colleagues in other unions, a situation Education Minister Liz Sandals says cannot be justified in the next round of bargaining.

The extra money for the elementary teachers will cost the province $112-million a year on top of whatever raises the union negotiates next time.

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The new tentative deal, which mirrors agreements with the public high school teachers, freezes the wages of most elementary educators, but still allows younger teachers to move up the salary grid.

Sandals says teachers will take at least one unpaid day off during the course of the contract to help offset the cost of allowing raises for their younger colleagues.

She says eliminating the ability of teachers to bank up to six months’ worth of sick days to be paid out at retirement will save the government $1.1-billion dollars.

The Progressive Conservatives accuse the Liberals of spending money the deficit-plagued government doesn’t have to buy labour peace with teachers.

The tentative agreement with ETFO includes a provision for 11 sick days a year at 100 per cent pay, with an additional 120 days at 90 per cent pay.

The elementary teachers will also get an enhanced retirement gratuity payout similar to one given to the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation.

The elementary teachers will have until June 23 to ratify the agreement in principle, with local bargaining to be concluded no later than Aug. 29.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/liberal-government-boosts-ontario-elementary-teachers-salaries-to-match-french-catholic-counterparts/feed0stdMembers of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario make two per cent less than their colleagues in other unions, a situation Education Minister Liz Sandals, shown here in February, says cannot be justified in the next round of bargaining